Looking Back at The First Six STAR WARS Films’ Teaser Trailers

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As we wait for the Star Wars: The Force Awakens teaser trailer to be rolled out later today, let’s take a look back at the first teaser trailers for all six previous Star Wars films. Spanning nearly three decades, it is interesting to see how the art of cutting a trailer has changed over time.

With phrases like “.. A boy, a girl and a universe” and “… a billion years in the making,” I dare say that the teaser for the first film shows that Twentieth Century Fox’s marketing department had absolutely no idea what it was trying to sell to people. Though to be fair, the trailer was probably put together while the film was still being edited, a time when it very famously did not have quite the pace and tone that we associate with it now. The Empire Strikes Back‘s teaser is notable for its abundant use of production art and photographs. There’s not an actual moving image from the film in the whole one minute, twenty-six second run time. Also, there’s no “Episode V.” Meanwhile, Return Of The Jedi‘s first teaser is still using the film’s original Revenge Of The Jedi title.

Of the prequel trilogies, I would say that the teaser for Attack Of The Clones stands out the most for its stylistic use of just the iconic sound of Darth Vader’s breathing apparatus and very little else over images from the film. Running a close second would be the teaser for Revenge Of The Sith thanks to the use of Alec Guiness’s dialogue from the first Star Wars film recounting Darth Vader’s backstory (from “a certain point of view” of course.”)

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About Rich Drees 7262 Articles
A film fan since he first saw that Rebel Blockade Runner fleeing the massive Imperial Star Destroyer at the tender age of 8 and a veteran freelance journalist with twenty-five years experience writing about film and pop culture. He is a member of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle.
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